Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

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POLICE ARREST SUSPECTS IN ELECTION-EVE SHOOTING

2004-05-14 19:59:01

Taipei, May 14 (CNA) Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB)
officials said Friday that they will check if there is relevance
between two suspects seized by Kaohsiung police and the shooting of
President Chen Shui-bian and Vice President Annette Lu on the eve of
the March 20 presidential election.

CIB Commissioner Hou You-yi said that the suspects were arrested
mainly because they possess home-made guns and ammunition, which does
not mean they are involved in the March 19 shooting.

They were the first arrests since the shooting, the first of its
kind in Taiwan's history. Until Friday, police had made little
headway in the investigation into the case.

Hou said that the two suspects ran a pub in Tainan, southern
Taiwan, but closed up shop after the shooting in Tainan and left for
Kaohsiung.

Hou said that the CIB is not sure if they are involved in the
case, but noted that since the shooting, anyone violating the guns
and ammunition control regulations will be subject to checks and the
two suspects -- one of whom is wanted for drug crimes and another one
has a previous fraud conviction -- have fallen into the category that
needs further screening.

However, the most suspicious point about the two is that they
both had home-made guns, one of which has been fired, and copper
bullets.

Hou said that a task force investigating the shooting have sent
personnel to learn about the matter and that all physical evidence,
including the guns and bullets, would be brought back to CIB
headquarters in Taipei for further analysis.

CIB experts said that the focus of their investigation will be
whether there are machine marks on the seized bullets and whether
they came from the same source as the bullets used in the shooting.

The experts said that they still could not determine if one lead
bullet and copper bullet that slightly injured the president and the
vice president respectively in the shooting came from the same gun.

The heads of the two bullets have none of the rifling marks left
by standard guns, but only some machine marks, they said, and that
this, coupled with the tiny amount of gunpowder in the bullets, will
make the matching work difficult.

World renowned Chinese American forensic expert Henry Lee, who
was invited to assist in the investigation, has suggested tracing the
origin of the bullets found at the scene of the shooting through the
machine marks on them.

If the retrieved bullets bear the same machine marks as those
seized in Kaohsiung, it might be possible to confirm their origin.

Supporters of the "pan-blue alliance" have demanded an
investigation into the shooting, believing that it unfairly swayed
the bitterly contested election in Chen's favor.
Chen won by a narrow margin of 29,518 out of more than 13 million
ballots cast.